What we all keep as secrets
by jennygiraffadil
Summary: Remus and Sirius are in love with one another but too scared to come clean. James figures it all out over the years but, instead of trying to push them together, he tries to keep them apart. He just doesn't want to be the only one who is lonely.


**Title:** What we all keep as secrets.  
**Pairing:** Remus/Sirius.  
**Disclaimer:** I wish.  
**Summary:** Remus and Sirius are in love with one another but too scared to come clean. James figures it all out over the years but, instead of trying to push them together, he tries to keep them apart. Not because he has a problem with it, but because he doesn't want to be the only lonely marauder suffering from something so unrequited it hurts. He wants them to ache together. But they have other plans. 

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i.  
It was barely summer and their footprints were like shadows in the sand as they marched across the grounds; the high sun chasing their blistering backs and red faces. James said he had an idea; Sirius grinned along and didn't ask questions because they usually meant trouble. It was just the two of them for once, like it used to be before they discovered there was more to living outside of their little world - and that when one fell in love, the other would be left counting down the minutes until they fell out of it again; to save them from being lonely.

"Bit hot," James commented idly and Sirius just nodded. They manoeuvred themselves awkwardly with twisted muscles and sore joints to miss the rocks the other side of the great willow tree (left by the lake). He brushed a hand over the sweaty hair flopping into his eyes and almost laughed. 

Nothing was funny in particular, it rarely was during the long days, but the joy of being young always hit when they got their adrenaline flowing and their bones ached for all the right reasons. 

Sirius hobbled around a thick, protruding tree root as James sat down, and he threw himself beside him.

"Far enough away now?" he asked, incredulously, the temperature clinging to his eyebrows as he arched one elegantly and a trickle of sweat rolled down the side of his neck.

His fingers beaded through the grass as James looked at him.

"It'll do," James muttered under his breath as he shrugged himself out of his school jumper and loosened his tie. His head rested lightly against the tree trunk and it was uncomfortable and it stung as it dug into the small of his back; but it was just right.

Sirius shook his head and folded his legs out in front of him as the sound of hushed voices weaved their way between his ears and he smiled. Really smiled. 

"They're here," James started to say at the same time as Sirius called out "Remus!" and before long they were all lazing away in angles they would regret when night came and they couldn't sleep.

Peter cracked first and had his wand blasting cooling charms before anyone could say a word. Neither of the others certainly minded but they all shared hidden looks a little too high up for them to be caught and dissected and filed away in something they didn't even mean. It was just how they worked.

It only took an hour or two, laid haphazardly on the ground with slow conversation, until Sirius curled up into himself and let his voice grow softer. It was only a little matter longer before Remus got aches and a sore neck and a kink in the back of his leg. And all of a sudden they were tumbled across each other in sharp limbs and soft curves and just the perfect amount of eyes on eyes on skin, shying away.

Peter glanced at them, like he always did, before he starting pulling daisies up through his fingers and discarding the petals messily around him.

James almost didn't notice Remus's hand tugging playfully at Sirius's hair or the slightly flushed cheeks he blamed on the sun, but he did catch the dark longing look Sirius gave to the edge of Remus's shoulder when he thought he wouldn't see and the pursed lips and crossed legs.

And then they caught each other, almost caught each other, trying to look away too fast when fingers got trapped in buttons they hadn't noticed they were touching and they laughed. They both threw their heads back and they started to laugh as if there could be no better secret in the world. Such a tender, secure, frightfully effective secret that did nothing but push everyone not in on it away until it was over and open and amazing again.

James snorted and turned his head to look back up at the school then and, not for the first time, missed when it was just the two of them. Just him and Sirius. Remus had slotted into the equation so easily it was so hard to pinpoint when it had become natural. And Peter was just Peter. He made them make sense. And nobody was left out.

Until they grew up, or tried to grow up, and it all came down to who liked who more. And whilst, years back, James knew he could have been certain of the answer - as he watched the way Sirius was trying to casually palm Remus's thigh out of the corner of his eye, he realised now he'd be the one left out in the cold by everyone but Peter. And he didn't even really like him apart from when we had the good sweets.

ii.   
He figured it out first, he was even proud of himself until it hit him what it might mean. He was in the common room and they were whispering in the corner, as they'd taken to doing. Sitting on the sofa, pushed up against the side before the static glow of the fire, coming to breakfast late (but that was usually just more Sirius) - running off and falling over each other during the full moon with Remus waking up in a hospital bed, Sirius right by his side with heavy arms.

He always wondered why it just didn't seem to click inside his head, why they didn't -- they didn't work - like him and Sirius or him and Remus or Peter and -- he sighed and sat back on his bed, knocking another sip of butterbeer down his throat.

And he asked them. He asked him. He couldn't find the courage to ask them both; or the pride if he happened to be wrong. And he did, just after quidditch practice and they were in the showers; inappropriately. Sirius ran thick white suds of shampoo through his hair as James watched his feet.

"You like Remus," he said, stuttered, hissed and Sirius stilled, not turning to face him, but his hands stuck in place and he let the water run hazily down his body.

"I hardly think this is the time _or_ the place, James," he groaned fitfully low, under his breath, and both of their stomachs twisted into tight knots and their eyes hit the back wall.

Sirius ran his hands back down his neck, flinging his head forward for the water to steal back the soap and rinse off.

James rubbed a thick yellow sponge down his arms before he tried again.

"You do, don't you?" he asked and this time his voice was just as determined as Sirius's, "You like him. It all makes sense, it all -- it all _fits_. The way you act when you're with him, the way you act when he's around girls, how --"

But Sirius cut him off with a sharp, piercing growl.

"Don't you dare say a fucking word," he murmured darkly, and he was right in his face, right up against the divider between the stalls and their toes almost touched and James had never been more terrified of him.

"I mean it," Sirius snarled again, "Not one fucking word. He's clueless. And I'd like him to stay that way."

The rest of the bathroom was quiet, the rest of the boys, the rest of everyone. And he hoped, for both of their sakes, nobody had gone out of their way to overhear. That nobody had even noticed two teenage boys having a fight in the showers.

And he couldn't think of anything else to say right then.

So he didn't say anything at all.

He reached for his towel, wrapped it tightly around his waist and walked off.

Promises were worse than secrets to him, and he didn't intend on making one he planned not to keep.

iii.   
It was awkward when Remus started confiding in him, and then it got worse. Not that he said anything out of the blue or specific or even applicable to anything outside of the rhetorical scenarios he made up - but it was still there. Hanging in the background with every silence that washed over their conversation when the dormitory stairs pounded or crunched or echoed. And when Sirius was there, Remus became like radio silence. Nervous and wary and more talkative in short outbursts that didn't link.

But it wasn't until he slipped that James worked it out.

"I don't think they like me back," Remus had said, sitting cross-legged on James's bed right before dawn. He had tired eyes and he definitely looked worse for wear, but James sat and listened and nodded in the right places. And Remus continued.

"Sometimes," he had whispered, "Sometimes I think they might. When they put their arm around my shoulder. Or squeeze my knee. Or tell me I'm amazing. But then they go and kiss other people. And sleep with other people. They come running back to me in the end and then the touches are always back --" he bit his lip as he trailed off into hesitant fidgeting, looking up at James.

"I think I'd like to fall in love with them," he'd shared when the light had started to speckle against the curtains and movement could be heard rumbling downstairs, "I really think I'd like to."

"Her?" James had inquired and Remus had tried to make an excuse to leave. 

"Not her," he'd corrected, and he knew it was right the moment he saw Remus's eyes look about the room, "_Him,_" James smirked and the panic in Remus's face when he'd glanced hastily at Sirius's bed and back said everything.

But he was selfish and he knew. Sirius and Remus were in love with each other, or as good as he wanted to admit, but it was the two of them. And he was alone and in love and hurting. And he wanted them to feel the same. He wanted them to share it with him, for them to work through it together without anyone figuring anything out at all, no matter how many arguments it would cause or how much stress or how many fist fights.

He was selfish and he wanted to keep them apart so he wouldn't feel as pathetic or as much as a coward for still not saying a single word to Lily.

So he clashed his teeth together tightly then, he scratched at his scalp and tried to look as composed as he could when he looked Remus directly in the eyes and frowned. 

"Sirius is straight," he said calmly.

And the red rims around Remus's eyes when he eventually turned up for breakfast were like a kick in the chest he wasn't expecting.

iv.   
They kissed at the Yule Ball, sidled away in a corner between the shadows and windows. Sirius's hands were everywhere and his lips followed. Hips crashed against hips and loose robes blurred them into one another. It was difficult to tell what was going on from the chairs on the other side of the hall, but the fisting movement of heavy material and the repetitive grasping motions lower down caused James to want to look away.

Peter was looking too, or trying to, and blinking every now and then as he sipped at the punch that was dying his lips a light fruity red. He couldn't see, James knew he couldn't, or there would have been stains down his shirt and gaping fishbowl eyes.

He wondered if they'd figured it out when Remus took to grabbing Sirius's hand and moving it with soft, gentle gasps. He wondered even more when he kept hold of it as they tucked their robes back together and disappeared out of the door.

And for all he wanted to follow and tell them they were wrong, that it was a series of mistakes or coincidences, or that they just _shouldn't_, he slumped in his seat, instead, and watched as a dark-haired Ravenclaw span Lily around the dance floor with more grace than he knew he could ever hope to have.

v.   
It was the day before the holidays and nothing had happened. For all the months after what he referred to, now, as _The Incident_ neither Remus nor Sirius had been acting any differently. They were still secretive, and perhaps a little more moody; Remus even started avoiding Sirius just before the full moon - and then avoiding everyone else too. Sirius was a mess, he could see Sirius was a mess but he never said anything past "Tough luck, mate" and a pat on the shoulder. But they were all back together again and they were planning and plotting and scheming and he felt so enriched that he forgot about Lily for a while. He forgot about everything outside of his three friends and feeling infinite.

Peter, surprisingly, had offered a tremendous idea for their last day and, with a huge grin, he immediately sprang up the stairs to start the preparations and to tell the others. But his feet fell into silence when he heard voices mumbling through the door.

"I know it's weird," he heard Sirius say, "And I know it's awkward and horrible and so not what you want to hear but --"

"I need to say something first," Remus interrupted and James collapsed to sit on the top step just at it went eerily quiet and not even breathing could penetrate the tension, or the privacy that wasn't really theirs to begin with. He felt like he was intruding but he had to hear to stop it, to find out, to help them stay fixed and working and _close_.

"I think that said it all," Sirius's laughter rang through the door and shuffled feet bled through the tiny gap, "I know, Remus," Sirius continued, so quietly James had to push his straining ear to the wood to hear it, "I know. And I get it."

"So you --" Remus stuttered awkwardly.

"Most definitely," Sirius replied, "Always will."

And then the arching of bed springs and hisses to be quiet echoed between his ears. He stood up, balanced quietly on the edge of the step as he tried the handle - even though he expected it to be already locked. He banged on the door, against his better judgement, before storming back down the stairs to the common room.

"Peter," he hissed, and they were side by side almost instantly, "Did you know," he proclaimed roughly, superior; stubborn, "Did you know that Remus and Sirius happened to be _shagging_?"

He shoved the door back to the corridors open when Peter simply bit his lip, smiled, and said happily, "I knew it would happen eventually. They're just in love."

vi.  
It took him a whole train ride, but by the time they were pulling into King's Cross Station he felt like he could smile at them and mean it again.

He was lonely without love, he realised. They were just lonely without each other.


End file.
